Wikipedia:Not every article can be a Featured Article

(Redirected from Wikipedia:NOTALLFA)

Wikipedia is not finished, and theoretically, every article is pending improvement. We aspire to make as many articles perfect as possible, which naturally implies, of course, that the end goal of every article is to be a featured article. Ideally, this would be the case.

However, not every article can be a featured article. In fact, it is a simple truth that most articles will never be featured articles. Part of this fact is an issue of scale- Wikipedia has 6,821,679 articles. That is a figure on the order of millions. The encyclopedia currently only has 289,889 active users. Even if all of them were to devote themselves to getting all the articles to featured status, which will realistically never happen, it would take an inordinate amount of time to do so.

And even if we had an infinite amount of editors with an indefinite amount of time, many articles simply cannot become featured, no matter how much effort you throw at them. Some topics have new relevant updates come out about them too often to ever have a complete and stable article (the "stable" criteria necessarily biases against topics on current events or active public figures). Some topics are too obscure, niche, or undercovered, and thus do not have enough information about them for the article to become comprehensive and well-researched. Some topics just don't have the sources behind them. Some topics currently included aren't actually worthy of inclusion or even don't actually exist (longstanding hoaxes are still being discovered, and AfD is seemingly eternal).

But this is okay!

Just because most articles will never be featured, and many can never be featured, doesn't make them necessarily unworthy of inclusion. Some articles just exist. Sometimes a stub on a notable topic, about which there is little of note to be said but which is still notable nonetheless, simply exists because it is there. It is not necessary to create every article with the hope that we will one day be able to raise it to the coveted "featured" spot on the Main Page. The real reason why we're here is to supply information to our readers. Featured articles are just a nice bonus.

So anyway, the point is, don't worry if your article can't ever be perfect, or featured, or even particularly detailed. As long as it's properly cited, comprehensible and accessible to readers, and meets all other inclusion criteria, it's allowed to just exist, and you can take pride in improving it as is needed in what small ways you can!